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GUILFORD’S  WORST  BAD  EGG 
GETS  A  CHANCE  INSTEAD 
ft  OF  A  SENTENCE 


STATE 


GERALD  W.  JOHNSON 
(In  Greensboro  News) 


1920 

Published  by  the 

BOARD  OF  CHARITIES  AND  PUBLIC 
WELFARE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


\ 


https://archive.org/details/guilfordsworstbaOOjohn 


GUILFORD’S  WORST  BAD  EGG  GETS  A  CHANCE 
INSTEAD  OF  A  SENTENCE 


Greensboro  has  just  got  rid  of  one  of  the 
worst  of  her  bad  eggs.  The  manner  of  his 
going  is  the  substance  of  this  tale,  wherein 
for  convenience  sake  he  will  be  referred  to  as 
Joseph  Smith.  His  real  name  will  be  dis¬ 
carded,  because  there  is  a  chance  that  he  may 
return  one  of  these  days  distinctly  something 
other  than  a  bad  egg;  and  it  is  not  necessary 
to  the  purposes  of  this  story,  because  you, 
Mister  reader,  or  Madame,  being  a  well-con¬ 
ducted  person,  would  not  recognize  it  if  it 
were  told. 

Not  that  it  is  unknown.  On  the  contrary 
it  is  familiar  indeed  to  the  judges  of  the 
police  and  juvenile  courts;  familiar  to  every 
member  of  the  police  force;  familiar  to  every 
newspaper  reporter;  and  amounts  to  little  less 
than  an  obsession  with  the  probation  and  tru¬ 
ant  officers.  But  to  those  whose  business  never 
carries  them  outside  the  field  of  law-abiding 
respectability  it  would  mean  nothing.  Joseph 
Smith  will  do  as  well. 

Alias  Joseph  Smith,  then  be  it  explained,  lays 
claim  to  14  years  and  15  crimes.  The  latter 
are  not  petty  offenses,  either;  they  range  from 
burglary  down.  For  the  greatest  of  them  the 
small  body  of  Joseph  Smith  might  be,  under 
the  letter  of  the  law,  strapped  into  the  elec¬ 
tric  chair  and  roasted  to  a  cinder;  for  the  least 
of  them  a  combination  of  a  savage  prosecuting 
attorney  and  a  literal-minded  judge  might 
send  him  to  the  roads  for  a  year.  Joseph 
Smith  is  a  very  bad  egg  indeed. 

Had  you  ever  imagined  that  such  things 
happened  in  the  quiet,  orderly  little  city  of 
Greensboro?  Fourteen  years  old,  and  loaded 
down  with  crimes  enough  to  have  filled  a  long 
and  wicked  life!  Fourteen  years  old  and,  un¬ 
der  a  strict  interpretation  of  the  statute,  his 


life  already  forfeit  to  the  state!  Fourteen 
years  old  and  already  subject  for  the  lighter 
of  his  misdeeds  to  some  centuries  of  penal 
servitude,  if  he  were  given  the  limit  of  the 
law  in  every  case  against  him.  And  yet,  for 
all  his  appalling  history,  he  is,  to  outward 
view,  pretty  much  the  same  as  any  other 
14-year-old  boy.  He  is  small  for  his  age,  tow¬ 
headed  and  bright-eyed,  indeed,  rather  hand¬ 
some.  During  the  winter  months  you  can  see 
hundreds  of  just  such  boys  pouring  out  of  the 
schoolhouses  at  recess-time.  Yet,  Joseph 
Smith  has  broken  into  a  house  where  people 
were  sleeping  during  the  night,  which  is  a 
felony  under  the  laws  of  North  Carolina,  the 
extreme  penalty  for  which  is  death  by  elec¬ 
trocution. 

Why  Joseph  Was  Bad. 

What  made  of  this  ordinary  school-boy,  this 
potential  good  citizen  of  the  city  and  the  state, 
a  felon  at  14  years  of  age?  Was  it  Satan, 
chance,  environment,  fate — or  was  it  the  mis¬ 
fortune  of  not  having  been  orphaned  early  ? 
Had  he  been  a  waif,  the  city,  or  the  state,  or 
some  charitable  organization  would  probably 
have  taken  him  in  hand,  and  given  him  every 
chance  to  make  a  man  out  of  himself.  But 
Joseph  Smith,  until  quite  recently,  had  both 
a  father  and  a  mother.  The  father  was  a 
crook,  with  a  police-court  record  as  long  as 
your  arm.  The  mother — well,  perhaps  the  less 
said  about  the  mother,  the  better;  but  it  may 
be  worth  noting  that  one  of  her  habits  was  to 
go  away  from  the  city  for  weeks  at  a  time, 
leaving  Joseph  to  knock  about  the  streets, 
learning  all  the  evil  that  he  could  garner 
there.  What  small  boy,  between  the  ages  of 
12  and  14,  has  not  been  filled  with  the  mighty 
ambition  to  become  a  pirate?  Joseph  Smith 
became  one;  and  that,  perchance,  is  after 
all  the  main  difference  between  him  and  other 
boys.  Evidence  of  that  is  the  fact  that  this 
very  day  he  is  as  proud  of  his  lawless  deeds 
done  in  dead  earnest,  as  other  boys  are  of 
theirs,  done  in  make-believe. 


4 


But  a  short  time  ago  came  the  inevitable 
crash,  and  the  career  of  Joseph  Smith  as  a 
bad  egg  was  ended.  After  exasperating 
months  of  fruitless  endeavor,  the  police  got 
him  with  the  goods;  and  in  the  juvenile  cell 
in  Guilford  county  jail  he  confessed  his  15 
crimes  with  perhaps  more  pride  than  peni¬ 
tence;  for  after  all,  he  is  only  14  years  old. 

In  the  big  courtroom,  two  stories  below, 
the  mills  of  justice  were  grinding  away.  Un¬ 
der  the  law,  up  until  last  year,  it  would  have 
been  possible  to  drop  Joseph  Smith,  14  years 
old,  into  the  hopper  of  that  ponderous  ma¬ 
chine,  designed  to  break  the  hardest  of  hard 
men,  and  ill  equipped  to  deal  with  small  boys 
whose  mania  for  playing  pirate  no  father’s 
stern  kindliness  had  repressed.  But,  luckily 
for  Joseph  Smith,  the  legislature  of  1919  had 
written  it  into  the  statutes  of  North  Carolina 
that  naughty  children  shall  no  longer  be 
crushed  in  the  iron  grip  which  the  state,  for 
its  own  defense,  is  compelled  to  lay  upon 
grown  men,  hardened  in  crime. 

Therefore  Joseph  Smith  never  went  into 
the  big  courtroom,  never  faced  his  honor,  the 
judge  of  the  Superior  court  of  this  district, 
the  battery  of  lawyers,  the  12  unwilling  ju¬ 
rors,  never  heard  his  doom  pronounced  from 
the  formal  bench  of  justice,  never  was 
marched  away  by  some  brawny  officer  of  the 
law,  never  made  the  tragic  journey  down  to 
Raleigh,  never  entered  the  massive,  gloomy 
walls  of  that  dreadful  building  by  the  railroad 
tracks,  whose  very  shadow  casts  a  chill  upon 
the  hearts  of  travelers  as  they  pass  upon  the 
trains.  Strong  men  find  written  over  the  por¬ 
tals  of  that  house,  “All  hope  abandon,  ye  who 
enter  here.”  How  much  less  chance  of  bring¬ 
ing  out  anything  worth  saving  would  there 
be  for  a  14-year-old  lad!  But  Joseph  Smith 
has  not  gone  there;  he  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
law,  but  the  law  of  North  Carolina  no  longer 
thrusts  wayward  children  down  into  the  maw 
of  hell. 


5 


Under  the  New  Order. 


On  the  contrary,  one  perfect,  green  and 
golden  morning  in  the  month  of  June,  Joseph 
Smith  was  taken  for  a  long  automobile  ride 
with  some  gentlemen,  not  one  of  whom 
wore  a  blue  coat  with  brass  buttons,  or  car¬ 
ried  a  revolver  on  his  hip.  People  along  the 
road  certainly  saw  nothing  resembling  a  con¬ 
victed  criminal  being  taken  to  serve  his  sen¬ 
tence  for  multiple  crimes  against  the  statutes 
made  and  provided  and  the  peace  and  dignity 
of  the  state.  All  they  saw  was  a  motor  car 
containing  some  men  and  a  couple  of  small 
boys;  and  even  had  they  been  informed  as  to 
what  was  taking  place,  they  might  have  hesi¬ 
tated  to  say  which  of  the  small  boys  was  the 
criminal  and  which  the  son  of  the  committing 
magistrate,  merely  going  for  a  ride. 

There  was  nothing  in  the  least  tragic  about 
the  journey  of  Joseph  Smith  to  his  place  of 
detention.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  be  diffi¬ 
cult  to  imagine  a  pleasanter  ride  than  that, 
through  the  rolling  wheat  fields  of  Guilford 
and  Davidson,  across  the  long  toll-bridge  that 
spans  the  tawny  Yadkin,  into  the  cotton  fields 
of  Rowan  and  Cabarrus,  through  city  streets 
and  country  lanes,  and  many  little  towns, 
where  porches  and  fences  along  the  street 
were  all  aflame  with  pink  and  red  climbing 
roses. 

Nor  was  it  at  any  forbidding  pile  of  ma¬ 
sonry,  with  narrow  slits,  heavily  barred,  for 
windows,  and  armed  guards  prowling  up  and 
down  outside,  that  the  journey  ended.  Three 
miles  beyond  Concord  the  automobile  drew 
up  before  a  red  brick  building  with  tall  white 
columns  in  front,  like  some  unusually  magnif¬ 
icent  country  residence.  Stretching  away 
from  it  in  a  stately  row  facing  the  highway 
were  four  red  brick  cottages,  a  shop,  and  a 
schoolhouse  still  in  course  of  construction. 
All  in  front  were  lawns  and  graveled  drive¬ 
ways  and  flower-beds  interspersed  with  shrub¬ 
bery.  At  the  rear  was  a  trellis  loaded  heavily 
with  a  magnificent  red  rambler,  blazing  with 


6 


flowers;  and  in  front  of  it  holly-hocks,  pink 
and  the  reddest  of  all  imaginable  reds,  added 
to  the  riot  of  color. 

On  the  driveway  in  front  of  the  big  building 
were  assembled  the  reasons  for  all  this — some 
50  or  60  boys,  ranging  in  size  from  an  eight- 
year-old  to  some  sturdy  lads  of  16.  They  were 
dressed  in  blue  denim  overalls  that  bore  evi¬ 
dence  of  frequent  scrubbing.  They  were  tanned 
and  fairly  riotously  healthy,  as  they  proved 
by  skylarking  all  over  the  place  while  they 
waited  for  orders  from  the  two  or  three  soft- 
spoken,  tanned  and  stalwart  men  about  the 
place.  Presently  one  of  them  spoke,  and  in¬ 
stantly  the  assemblage  fell  into  what  the  sol¬ 
diers  call  “column  of  twos,”  each  boy  picking 
up  a  hoe  as  he  moved.  They  were  graded  by 
size  from  the  head  of  the  column,  and  at  the 
rear  the  hoes  were  well-nigh  twice  as  tall  as 
their  bearers;  but  as  one  of  the  men  stepped 
to  the  head  of  the  column  and  it  moved  off,  the 
rearmost  pair  swung  their  hoes  to  the  shoul¬ 
ders  with  a  flourish,  and  carried  them  jauntily 
away. 


North  Carolina’s  New  Idea. 

Nothing  mournful,  nothing  morbid,  clung  to 
that  procession;  yet  only  a  few  years  since 
many  of  these  would  have  been  flung  into  the 
midst  of  the  worst  criminals  that  the  state  has 
produced,  because  the  last  one  of  them  had 
violated  some  of  the  statutes  written  in  the 
books  of  law.  The  great  state  of  North  Caro¬ 
lina,  however,  no  longer  looks  upon  her  bad 
boys  as  in  the  same  class  with  forgers  and 
murderers  and  embezzlers;  and  instead  of 
hurling  them  into  the  gloom  of  her  prison 
walls,  she  puts  them  to  live  among  flowers  and 
green  trees,  and  sets  them  to  work  in  the  sun¬ 
shine  where  the  crops  are  growing. 

Such  was  the  punishment  meted  out  to  Jo¬ 
seph  Smith,  bad  egg  of  Greensboro,  for  his  15 
crimes.  He  didn’t  like  it  at  all.  In  that  place 
of  sunshine  and  cheer  he  was  a  fish  out  of 
water.  Least  of  all  was  he  favorably  impressed 
by  the  tall,  sinewy  man,  whose  otherwise  grave 


7 


face  was  lighted  by  a  humorous  gleam  about 
the  eyes,  who  seemed  to  be  in  charge  of  the 
whole  business.  Joseph  Smith  demanded  at 
once  that  he  be  taken  back  to  spend  the  rest 
of  his  days  in  Guilford  county  jail.  In  that 
place,  and  under  that  man,  Joseph  Smith  will 
have  to  walk  a  chalk  line,  and  he  knows  it.  His 
15  crimes  will  not  make  him  a  hero  there;  he 
has  an  uncomfortable  certainty  that  if  he  un¬ 
dertakes  to  boast  of  his  lawless  deeds  in  that 
atmosphere  he  will  be  simply  swept  away  by  a 
great  gale  of  laughter,  and  the  thought  of  be¬ 
ing  suddenly  reduced  from  the  grade  of  a  des¬ 
perate  character  to  that  of  a  particularly 
simple-minded  fool  is  gall  and  wormwood  to  his 
spirit.  Why,  they  will  not  even  do  him  the 
compliment  of  locking  him  up,  and  there  is 
not  so  much  as  a  picket  fence  around  the  place. 
So  perhaps  Joseph  Smith  will  run  away,  at 
first;  but  after  he  has  tried  that  a  time  or  two, 
and  found  that  all  it  gets  him  is  an  ignominious 
return  by  the  chief  of  police  of  the  first  neigh¬ 
boring  town  he  strikes,  followed,  perhaps,  by 
a  painful  interview  with  one  of  the  teachers 
equipped  with  a  small,  but  distressingly  tough 
and  limber  twig,  and  then  by  gibes  from  his 
fellows,  he  will  drop  that.  Then  presently  he 
will  take  an  interest  in  something  else — maybe 
in  his  school  books,  maybe  in  what  his  increas¬ 
ingly  cunning  fingers  can  accomplish  with  tools, 
maybe  in  the  literary  and  debating  society  of 
his  house,  but  in  something.  And  at  that  very 
moment  Joseph  Smith  will  have  set  his  foot 
on  the  long  upward  grade  toward  decent  citi¬ 
zenship,  possibly  toward  that  eventual  return 
to  Greensboro  at  which  he  will  be  glad  that 
this  article  did  not  print  his  real  name. 

But  Joseph  Smith  is  not  in  yet.  First  it  is 
necessary  that  his  traveling  companions  be 
escorted  through  the  plant,  to  marvel  at  the 
spotless  cleanliness  that  pervades  every  nook 
and  cranny,  and  the  military  tidiness  of  the 
living  quarters.  Then  the  officials  of  the  party 
retire  with  him  and  the  superintendent  to  dis¬ 
cuss  his  enrollment,  and  the  unofficial  members 
of  the  party  wait  outside,  where  they  are  in- 


8 


voluntary  witnesses  to  a  little  drama  that  they 
cannot  forget,  nor  would,  if  they  could. 


A  Training  School  Drama. 

A  handsome  motor  car  drives  up,  containing 
a  middle-aged  gentleman,  and  a  lady,  apparent¬ 
ly  his  wife,  and  three  young  girls.  The  size 
and  equipment  of  the  automobile  indicate 
wealth,  and  the  dress  and  bearing  of  the  party 
are  no  less  eloquent  of  breeding.  There  is  a 
consultation  with  one  of  the  teachers  and  a 
messenger  is  dispatched  somewhere.  Ten  min¬ 
utes  later  another  automobile,  this  one  obvious¬ 
ly  belonging  to  the  farm,  drives  up,  and  out  of 
it  leaps  one  of  the  lads  who  a  while  ago 
marched  off  at  the  head  of  the  column.  He  is 
apparently  approaching  16,  dressed  in  the  usu¬ 
al  blue  overalls,  and  as  he  whips  off  his  big 
straw  hat  his  face  appears  as  sunburned  as  the 
others.  Nor  is  it  a  bad  face — on  the  contrary, 
rather  a  manly  one,  as  the  supple,  strong  figure 
is  distinctly  manly.  What  it  may  have  been 
when  it  first  arrived,  one  can  only  guess;  but 
the  rush  of  the  elder  woman  to  his  arms,  and 
the  passion  with  which  she  throwTs  her  arms 
around  him  are  ample  evidence  that  the  mother 
has  never  ceased  to  love  him,  no  matter  how 
egregious  his  folly. 

Nobody  knew  the  beginning  of  the  story. 
Nobody  could  have  had  the  brutality  to  inquire. 
What  did  it  matter,  anyhow,  since  in  the  boy’s 
face,  in  his  attitude,  in  his  every  gesture,  the 
wayfaring  man,  though  a  fool,  could  have  seen 
a  happy  ending  and  that  right  soon  ?  But 
suppose  that  boy  had  been  born  10  years 
earlier,  and  had  committed  his  error,  whatever 
it  was,  before  this  school  was  established  ? 
The  other  institution,  the  one  at  Raleigh,  would 
probably  have  received  him,  and  when  it 
spewed  him  out  not  even  his  own  sisters  could 
have  looked  upon  the  thing  he  would  have  be¬ 
come  without  loathing;  and  while  the  mother 
might  have  thrown  her  arms  around  him  still, 
it  would  have  been  with  death  in  her  heart. 


9 


“And  some  people/’  said  one  of  the  unofficial 
observers,  blowing  his  nose  mightily  and  then 
carefully  polishing  his  glasses  which  had  sud¬ 
denly  acquired  a  suspicious  dimness,  “some 
people  have  said  that  this  thing  wasn’t  worth 
while.” 

That  is  the  end  of  the  story  of  how 
Greensboro  got  rid  of  one  bad  egg.  But  there 
is  an  epilogue.  The  officials  added  that  when 
they  returned  from  the  interview  with  the 
superintendent,  Joseph  Smith  got  into  the 
Jackson  Training  School  by  the  skin  of  his 
teeth.  There  are  four  cottages.  Each  cottage 
is  built  to  accommodate  30  boys.  When  Joseph 
Smith  arrived,  there  were  already  132  boys  in 
the  institution.  Figure  it  out  for  yourself. 

Guilford  county  some  time  ago  resolved  to 
erect  another  cottage  at  the  school  so  that  her 
own  bad  eggs  might  be  taken  care  of,  at  least 
to  the  number  of  30;  but  legal  obstacles  have 
been  encountered  which  only  the  legislature 
can  sweep  away.  There  is  a  special  session 
of  the  legislature  next  month,  and  if  Guilford 
asks,  it  will  grant  the  necessary  permission  for 
the  county  commissioners  to  go  ahead  with 
their  plans. 

There  are  other  Joseph  Smiths  in  the  coun¬ 
ty,  several  in  the  city,  and  the  child  welfare 
officials  are  at  their  wits’  end  to  know  what 
to  do  with  them.  Of  course,  the  penitentiary 
is  always  open,  but  the  county  officials  hesitate 
to  use  that  means  of  egress  from  the  dilemma. 
They  somehow  do  not  feel  right,  even  if  they 
have  express  authorization  in  the  written  law, 
about  thrusting  a  small  boy,  even  one  who  has 
violated  the  law,  down  into  the  Bottomless  Pit. 
They  remember  certain  remarks  that  once  were 
made  about  people  who  do  that  sort  of  thing — 
remarks  to  the  effect  that  in  the  case  of  such 
a  man,  which  they  fear  might  be  construed  to 
mean  such  a  county,  “it  were  better  for  him 
that  a  millstone  were  hanged  about  his  neck 
and  that  he  were  cast  into  the  midst  of  the 
sea.” 


10 


!U> 


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Pamphlet 

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Gaylord  Bros.  Inc 


Makers 

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PAT.  JAN  21.  1908 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


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